Jinx's Magic by Sage Blackwood

Author:Sage Blackwood
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

17

Simon Takes a Turn for the Worse

No one would tell Jinx where Sophie was, or even admit she existed. He needed advice. Maybe Simon was back by now. He might have moved the table over to the wall, signaling it was safe for Jinx to return.

It was difficult to get rid of Wendell, who was always eager to go out into the city. In the city Wendell was almost a different person—at least, he was a much more confident, less nervous and diffident person.

Jinx followed the winding streets through the part of town called the Eastern Crescent, till he got to the blue-violet door to Simon’s house.

The front room was thick with dust. Were there footprints in it? Jinx couldn’t tell. Anyway, the table was right where it had been. Simon hadn’t come back.

Jinx went through the book room to the enchanted door that led to the Urwald. Once he passed through it he’d be in the Urwald—and subject to the Bonemaster’s deathbinding curse.

Suppose Simon had killed the Bonemaster, and triggered the curse? Then Simon was dead. What about Jinx? Would he drop dead when he opened the door? Or would he survive because he hadn’t been in the Urwald when the Bonemaster died?

Jinx opened the door. So far, so good. He took a breath, which might be his last, and stepped into the stone hallway of Simon’s Urwald house. He was still alive.

He lit a candle. Cats punched their heads against his knees and yowled. The workroom was exactly as Jinx had left it. He went out to the kitchen. There was no sign of Simon anywhere. He had never come back.

Jinx went up the winding staircase to the Farseeing Window. He willed it to show him Simon, but it showed him nothing but the dark Urwald night.

Jinx felt a longing to talk to someone. Elfwyn, for example. The window used to always show him Elfwyn, before he’d ever met her. It didn’t now.

He put an aviot on the sill, and concentrated on the bespelled coin in Reven’s boot.

Shapes moved in the darkness of the window. Gradually Jinx made out a boiling mass of fighting men and women, some armed with axes, some with swords, and some with sticks. Then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and he could see Eric the Lumberjack lying on the ground, not moving. Somewhere in that seething battle must be Reven, but Jinx couldn’t pick him out. He couldn’t see Elfwyn. He really hoped she wasn’t there. But she probably was. Thinking pink fluffy thoughts amid the mayhem.

He put the aviot in his pocket, ending the spell. Then he stood looking into the window for a while, hoping it might show him what had happened to Simon. It didn’t.

Maybe Simon had been captured by the Bonemaster. Or maybe Simon was, well, dead, in which case there wasn’t anything for Jinx to do but try to figure out how to do the bottle spell.

The bottle! Why hadn’t Jinx thought of that before?

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